The Old Faith

Slavikum is a small archive of the pre-Christian Slavic world - its gods, its monsters, and the symbols carved to keep one close and the other at bay.

Very little of this tradition was written down by the people who lived it. What survives reaches us second-hand: through the chronicles of missionaries who came to replace it, through folk songs and household ritual that outlasted the temples by centuries, and through place names that still carry a god's name without anyone remembering why.

That means much of what follows is reconstruction rather than record. Where scholars disagree - and on the Slavic pantheon they disagree often - the aim here is to say so plainly rather than to smooth the gaps over. A tidy myth is usually a modern one.

The material here is drawn from a variety of sources, including academic works, folklore collections, and the writings of early travelers. Where possible, I've linked to the original sources or to translations of them.

The collection

Entries are grouped into the gods of the upper world and the creatures of the lower one, though the boundary between them was never as firm as later retellings suggest. Each entry pairs an illustration with a short account of the figure and the role they held.

Disclaimer

Yes, the images are AI-generated. No, I'm not going to apologize for using them.
I'm not an artist, and I don't have the time or skill to illustrate this collection myself. AI allows me to give these pieces a visual element that otherwise wouldn't exist.
That said, if you're an artist and would like to contribute your work to the collection, I'd genuinely love to hear from you. Please reach out - I'll be happy to credit you for anything you create.

This is a personal project and a work in progress. Corrections and better sources are welcome - see the contact page.